


Calling Up Trouble

by butterflydreaming (chrysalisdreams)



Series: Clow Reed's Magic [1]
Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalisdreams/pseuds/butterflydreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Clow Reed has an ambitious spell all prepared. If it goes as planned, he will command elemental power. He's confident that he can avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of such a potent spell going out of control... even if he's the first magician to try anything like it (and even though his voice hasn't even finished changing).</p>
<p>[Clow creates his first Clow Cards.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calling Up Trouble

 

Clow Reed decided that he was ready. Alone in the woods, in a place of power where the oak trees hid him from his mother's scrutiny and his father's exacting expectation, he prepared the workings of his bold spell. This day was an auspicious day for his intentions. Clow had foreseen the powerful magic cards that he would one day wield if all went well. Today, he would make his first contracts with the spirits of the five Chinese elemental phases: fire, water, earth, metal, and wood.

Like Clow himself, his ultimate magic would be a blend of western and eastern magic traditions yet greater than the sum of its parts. Clow began with the western magic tradition of calling the four compass directions, or “quarters.” Drawing a circle in soil with his staff, he walked the perimeter of the glade. As he passed each cardinal point he raised his voice to the quarters, calling for the blessing of nature on his endeavor. To his annoyance, his timbre wobbled high and low. His voice had not yet set, and like his chin that would not grow more than three hairs of a beard, it marked him as still a youth.

If his spell worked... _when_ his spell worked, even his father would have to acknowledge that he had proven his place among men.

When the end of his line touch the beginning point of the circle, he turned and crossed to create the first square within his magic circle. The damp leaf mulch released a dark perfume  as Clow's staff made furrows along the ground. Clow finished the remaining aspects of his personal design: the written marks of power, the layered angles, the central sun, and the crescent moon in its smaller circle that touched the outer circle's boundary.

It was because of the next thing that he wanted to be out of sight of his parents. If they knew what he was about to  do, their censure would block him from continuing  any further. His sorcerer parents had already extracted his vow not to call forth elemental spirits of his world. Therefore, he had no choice but to exploit the loophole and summon from another dimension.

He needed a contract with a potent spirit to keep him strong enough when he bound the other four elemental powers to him. Clow had been born in the eastern zodiac year for fire. Turned to the south, he raised his magic and called fire to come to him.

He expected a blaze. He braced himself for a sinuous dragon or something like an ifrit or salamander. A glowing portal opened in the air in front of him.

From its disc of light a heavenly lady emerged. She wore flowing, draped robes, and her hair stood atop her head in loops, like a bow, in the style of the ancient Orient. She looked at Clow without speaking. The ribbon winding around her shoulders rippled in the air on an intangible current. Her wide eyes studied him, expressing benevolent curiosity.

For a heartbeat, Clow found himself unable to conjure a single word. Then he recalled himself and the peril he would be in if he lost control of a summoning. "Are you an agent of fire?" he asked the heavenly maiden.

She nodded slowly and smiled as if withholding a secret.

"Will you make a contract with me, to be bound to me until such time as my debt to you is paid?"

She nodded again. She floated toward him, cradled his face in her hands, and placed a kiss on his brow. With her kiss, she signed their contract.

Clow wanted to whoop and holler at this first important success, not to mention a kiss from a woman, even if she was a fairy. "Now we must proceed in the order of your strength," he instructed, "but also of cooperation." The next element in a positive direction was the phase of earth. Fire would overcome metal, almost certainly ensuring that the agent of metal would yield, but Clow did not want to start with antagonism between the spirits.

_I must open the gate to Autumn_ , she said to Clow in the language of thought, _so that my counterpart can pass through_. Her emphasis implied the proper name of a place, not a season.

The fairy hovered to the north position of Clow's circle. The gentle fairy  was not what he expected for fire. Still, her colors -- white and blue -- were the colors of hottest flame. Surely, she was a capable spirit.

The fairy spread her hands with a graceful motion, and another portal opened while the southern portal closed. Clow did not waste time.

"Come, agent of earth, and be bound by contract with me," Clow chanted.

Bursting forth from the portal, the newly arrived elemental being spun in a twirling dance around Clow and the first fairy. Her face held an expression of bliss as she danced through a tempest of loose petals and small, airborne flowers. Her arms reached out to Clow with invitation. He took her small hands in his and danced with her. He danced until he began to feel slightly dizzy, both from the motion and from the profusion of blossoms scenting the air. He brought their dance to a stop, though she swayed in place, smiling at him. She pulled his hands up to her lips and kissed his hands. The contract was made.

Flushed with exertion and success, young Clow called out to the element of metal, the next in the series. Both of the fairies grew perplexed. The ethereal women exchanged a look with each other. Clow saw this, and he urged the fire fairy to make the next portal. She appeared reluctant.

_Beckon water instead,_ she suggested.

_Yes! Yes!_ the flower maiden agreed. _I have a friend in Winter's sea._ She _will play with us!_

Clow almost considered that he might have gotten in over his head. Instead, he gestured for the first fairy to proceed making a way through for the new arrival. The fairy made her doorway in the west. Clow spoke the invitation. "Agent of water, our pact awaits. Be bound in contract with me, as your sister spirits have before you."

Clow told himself that he should have expected the water spirit to have a fishtail. Her hair flowed over her like the foam of waves. She swam vigorously through the air as if in a frothy sea, bubbles forming and bursting all around her. He felt the quick, effervescent touch of her kiss on his cheek before she grasped hands with the flower fairy in joyful reunion.

The first fairy was already making a passage for the next in their number. _The gate of Spring!_ she announced. The air stirred, blowing currents in the cloud of petals that the flowery fairy produced in her waltze with the bubbly fairy. Before Clow could call out to the agent of wood, the final element of five, a tremendous gust announced the arrival of a new spirit being.

When he saw her, Clow knew that he had made an error that invited calamity. She flew in on long, white wings at a great speed, her long hair streaming like pennants, clearly a spirit of air. Air was the fourth of the western _four_ elements. The lower half of her body appeared only as motion that kicked up the loose leaves and blew a tempest in the boundaries of Clow's circle.

If he couldn’t bind this air spirit, she might exploit his lack of preparation to break free of the circle. Unchecked, an elemental spirit of her power level could wreak havoc in the world of mortals. Clow lifted his voice over the whistling of the air spirit's wake. "Spirit of air!" He mustered a confidence that he did not feel when the wind tore all around him, billowing his robes. “Element of dawn’s direction! Enter into a covenant with me, Wind!”

All at once, the windstorm stilled. The air being floated to Clow and hovered face to face with the young sorcerer.  The other fairies gathered around, waiting.

_That sounds like it could be fun,_ she said.

Clow quelled any outward sign of his relief. Even a sigh communicated weakness in matters of magic.

_But be aware, once we of the Fairylands contract with you, if the contract is broken we will not return to our native realm without making mischief in equal measure to the obedience we have given. It will not be an easy task to capture us again._

Clow brought out the carefully drawn spell papers prepared to complete the binding of the spirits. He touched the paper rectangles one at a time with the top of his staff. With each touch, he named the fairies by names he could call them. “Windy!” he began. The spell paper became bright with mystical light; the air fairy flew to it, blowing a kiss at Clow before she embraced her new form. The paper dimmed as it took the appearance of a large playing card whose face was a portrait of the air fairy, her wings folded and her face serene.

“Bubble! Flower!” He sealed each of them in turn. Without missing a beat, he finished with an apt name for the first fairy. “Through!” The new cards fell into his hands as each of the fairies were sealed within them. The fairies seemed to recognize that the card forms were a dormant state, not a prison; each of their portraits showed a calm, cheerful expression. He removed his previous cards from an inner pocket of his robes and stacked the new additions on top of The Move and The Lock.

Clow Reed felt immensely proud of himself as he looked at his deck. Someday, even greater beings than these would call him master.

He wondered if he would get kisses from all of them.

~owari~

 

**Author's Note:**

> For Livejournal's Tsukimine Shrine Community  
> Challenge: Seasons  
> Canon: Yes (any)  
> Words: 500 or more  
> Rating: G to PG-13  
> Genre: Any  
> The Challenge: A relatively open challenge this time. Write a fic focused either on one of the four seasons, or on their cycle. Using them as metaphors is okay, too.  
> +  
> November CHALLENGE TOPIC #1
> 
> Theme: Elementary  
> Instructions: Write a fic that includes the words earth, wind, fire, and water. You may not just rattle off the names of the corresponding cards.
> 
> Alternate Instructions: Write a fic that focuses on one or more of the cards Earthy, Windy, Firey, and Watery.


End file.
